Wendy Lecker: ConnCAN: big influence, bad scholarship

Published 8:29 pm, Friday, June 1, 2012

Every year, the University of Colorado's National Education Policy Center bestows its "Bunkum Awards" for "the most compellingly lousy educational research for the past year." Recipients are think tank reports that "have most egregiously undermined informed discussion and sound policy making."

This year the spotlight falls on Connecticut!

ConnCAN, the charter school lobbyist, just received the "If Bernie Madoff Worked in School Finance" Award for its report, "Spend Smart," on how to reform school funding in Connecticut.

NEPC describes the report as employing a "reverse Robin Hood take-from-the-poor approach" that would make Connecticut's funding system even more inequitable by shifting funding away from students learning English and the poorest children toward charter schools, which serve fewer of those children.

As NEPC notes, ConnCAN's report is replete with "evidentiary black holes": citations to sources that do not support their propositions, unsubstantiated claims that fly in the face of accepted research and, worse still, assertions about data that are patently false.

One glaring example of ConnCAN's disingenuousness is its proposal for accounting for student need in a state's funding formula.

State funding formulas achieve equity and adequacy in part by accounting for different student needs. Educating a child who lives in poverty can cost up to twice as much as educating a child with no additional needs. Educating a child learning English can also cost twice as much. A child with disabilities may need services costing up to four times the basic amount.

ConnCAN's report ignores all evidence and proposes only one weight: a "student success factor," which is based only on a child's eligibility for free or reduced-priced lunch.

ConnCAN falsely claims that Connecticut need not consider English Language Learners because state Department of Education data shows that there is a strong overlap between the ELL population and poverty. That allegation is completely untrue.

Quite a few Connecticut districts have ELL populations that are disproportionately high compared to their low-income populations. If there were no weight for ELL, these districts would not have the funds to support programs for ELL students.

ConnCAN's proposed weight also fails to differentiate between free and reduced-price lunch, despite the clear evidence that as poverty rises, so does educational cost.

A system that does not account for students with disabilities, Connecticut's ELL students or our neediest children would render funding even more inequitable than our current system.

Why does ConnCAN advocate this weighting system?

To benefit charter schools, of course. The majority of Connecticut's charter schools serve very few students with disabilities, very few ELL children and serve more children who qualify for reduced-price lunch versus those qualifying for free lunch. If a system ignores these factors, then charters will receive money that public schools with lower-income children and more ELL children and children with disabilities deserve under a model that accounts for these need factors.

These are only some of the distortions ConnCAN employs in order to push a funding scheme that benefits only charter schools.

Why should we care about the fake reports published by ConnCAN? Because ConnCAN wields an unhealthy amount of power in Connecticut.

School funding reform was last addressed during the 2011 legislative session. ConnCAN unsuccessfully pushed its funding reform in the state Board of Education, then wrote a bill advocating the same scheme that was introduced, and defeated, in the Appropriations Committee. In his testimony opposing the bill, the governor's OPM secretary, Ben Barnes, noted that only one organization had input in the bill: ConnCAN.

However, Governor Malloy's administration has inexplicably changed its position, and now supports ConnCAN's agenda. There will be no push-back from the governor the next time ConnCAN acts.

Since no one addressed the school funding formula this session, attention will now turn to the Education Cost Sharing Task Force, appointed by the governor to study the effectiveness of Connecticut's school funding system. The task force presents its findings this fall.

ConnCAN spent half a million dollars pushing Governor Malloy's recently passed education law, which benefits charter schools most. We can expect ConnCAN to deploy its propaganda machine full-force to push for its version of funding reform as fall approaches.

Yet ConnCAN's claims are not grounded in real evidence or research and are designed to benefit only privately run charters.

The ECS Task Force's charge is to clarify Connecticut's constitutional responsibility toward every child in Connecticut. When it examines the wealth of research from successful reforms across this nation, one hopes it will be able to distinguish solid evidence from glossy, footnoted bunkum.